


Hold In Your Breath

by lady_ragnell



Series: Summerpornathon Entries (and Leftovers) 2013 [8]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M, Magic, Other, Team Gluttony, post breakup
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-20
Updated: 2013-08-20
Packaged: 2017-12-24 03:38:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/934859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lady_ragnell/pseuds/lady_ragnell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Morgana's lips are red around words of magic on the eleven o'clock news.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hold In Your Breath

**Author's Note:**

> **Warning:** set in a semi-dystopia where those with magic are treated as sex objects by the culture/society
> 
> Written for the seventh week of the summerpornathon, for the "Magic" challenge.
> 
> I have no immediate plans to expand, but that may change when I have a little more time on my hands.
> 
> Title from Regina Spektor's "Genius Next Door."

Morgana’s lips are red around words of magic on the eleven o’clock news. She was smart. She kept her video just tasteful enough that the news networks can run it uncut, but everyone knows what she’s doing with her eyes gold and her hands teasingly out of frame. She gasps and shifts against silk sheets, and she watches the camera for long enough that everyone knows it isn’t faked.

_PM’s Daughter in Sexy Sorcery Scandal!_ screams the text scrolling under the video as her mouth moves silently while someone talks over it about the natural immorality of sorcerers.

Merlin clicks his television off the second they mention a comment from the PM’s son. It’s bad enough knowing Morgana just condemned herself to a life of never being taken seriously, that in trying to be brave she’s only made herself a tool in her father’s hand. Seeing Arthur will only make it worse.

*

Arthur is drunk on his voicemail later. “Merlin … God, I don’t even know why I’m calling. You must have seen.” He breathes in and out. “I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to say to you, I—fuck. Fuck you for being a sorcerer, fuck you for _leaving me_ —”

It’s the first time he’s heard Arthur’s voice in six months, but he deletes the rest unheard.

Merlin told him because when he was with him he started to wonder if it was true, if he was some sort of insatiable creature meant only for sex. With Arthur inside him, thrusting so deep, taking him apart from the inside, or with Merlin’s mouth wrapped around his cock and moaning for it, it sometimes felt that way. He could get lost in Arthur, and most of him thought it was love but part of him _wondered_ , and then he had to say it, because he knew Arthur would end it when he wasn’t strong enough.

It was a clean break, and Merlin was almost fine, and now there are Morgana’s magic-gold eyes on his television set and Arthur’s voice on his phone, and what the fuck does he do with that?

*

In the morning, Merlin goes to work. It isn’t as if he has another option. It’s not a good job, but it’s better than the jobs most of the sorcerers he knows have, posing for pictures or shooting porn. All waiting tables takes is a shirt with buttons left open and tight trousers and making something small in the back room hover for hours so the customers can see his eyes glow gold, groups of giggling women and winking businessmen.

Nobody on the train there can talk about anything but Morgana. Merlin wishes they were talking about the brave speech she made before it became obvious what she was doing, but they’re all clicking their tongues, talking about Uther Pendragon’s shame, and on all the screens they’re showing Morgana’s face in the last gasp of orgasm, over and over till it stops meaning anything, becomes just another pretty sorceress showing them what she can do.

Morgana’s waiting for him in front of the restaurant, uncaring of the stares she gets from everyone passing, the pictures people are taking on their phones. She can’t have been there long, if the paparazzi haven’t found her yet. “I have a proposition for you,” she says, and Merlin can’t bring himself to object as she leads him away.

*

“We’re going to start a revolution,” Morgana says back at her flat, the one she keeps hidden away from even Uther and miraculously still safe from the press. She’s smoking like a chimney and acting like the last time she saw Merlin wasn’t the day he left her brother shouting that he never wanted to see him again.

Merlin can’t bring himself to pretend it will be that easy. He knows better by now. “We?”

“The time has come, Merlin. Nimueh Priest already called me with her support. She’s willing to take a stand, make the move she’s been talking about for so long, but we need you.”

“And you think it will work?”

It’s not an honest question, more his way of scoffing, but Morgana takes him seriously. “You convinced my brother, Merlin. I have every faith that you can convince the world.”

Merlin shakes his head. “I didn’t convince Arthur of anything.” He thinks of the voicemail he deleted, and of their fight on that last, terrible day, Arthur asking how many people he’s fucked, vicious and hurt.

In answer, Morgana presses a button on her phone, and there’s a terrible recording of Arthur’s voice, probably from the television, maybe the same broadcast Merlin turned off: “I think magic can do more than what we limit it to, and I refuse to see my sister, and those like her, limited.”

The recording stops. Merlin knows he’s playing too much of his hand, but he still says “I’m in.”

Morgana smiles.


End file.
